Colin Firth stars in the true story of former Freedom from Torture Client and patron, Eric Lomax

The Railway Man, an inspiring true story of former Freedom from Torture client and patron, Eric Lomax, will be hitting the UK big screens in January.

Oscar-winner Colin Firth stars as Lomax, who struggles to overcome the trauma he suffered as the result of his harrowing torture at the hands of his Japanese captors during the Second World War. The film, based on a memoir of the same name written by Lomax and published in 1995, charts how the former British army officer's relationship with his second wife starts him out on the difficult road to recovery more than 40 years after his initial capture.

Scheduled for release in the UK next month, the film details how the middle-aged railway and radio enthusiast Eric meets the beautiful Canadian Patti, played by fellow Academy Award-winner Nicole Kidman, on a train journey through Scotland in 1983 and they marry after a whirlwind romance. However, the mental scars he still carries from the torture he endured as a prisoner of war, coupled with paralysing nightmares, threaten the happy marriage and Eric shuts himself off from his new bride, refusing to confide in her. Determined not to lose her husband, Patti turns to Eric's friend Finlay (played by Stellan Skarsgård), who finally reveals the terrible secret of his past and she sets about helping him on the path to recovery.

In flashbacks to his imprisonment, Jeremy Irvine plays a young Eric forced into gruelling labour on the infamous Burma Railway in Thailand – known as the Death Railway – after the surrender of Singapore in 1942 and his subsequent torture when Japanese troops discover a homemade radio and map of the railway and accuse him of spying.

The film is the true story of how Patti helped her husband reach out to interrogator Takashi Nagase, the man who has haunted his soul for decades, and forgive those who inflicted unspeakable harm on him. The two men eventually met again more than 50 years on, approaching each other from either end of the bridge over the River Kwai which was built using British PoW labour.

Eric Lomax died last October, before completion of the film, aged 93. His journey to recovery involved 600-mile round trips from his home in Scotland to receive treatment at Freedom from Torture (then known as the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture) in London.

Keith Best, Chief Executive at Freedom from Torture, said:

"Eric Lomax was a Patron of Freedom from Torture and I enjoyed a lively correspondence with him. He suffered terrible abuse at the hands of his Japanese captors during the Second World War. He stated in our 25th Anniversary Review 'My turning point came in 1987 when I came across the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (now Freedom from Torture). For the first time I was able to unload the hate that had become my prison.'

"His story is an inspiration to all of how, with appropriate care, the terrible legacy of torture on the victim can be turned around. I read his testament, explaining that process, at a service for torture survivors in Westminster Cathedral on 27 June 2011: his courage and fortitude reflects what we find often in torture survivors who come to us for clinical care – that, given help, survivors can have the last word."